


Gentle as My River Heart

by stickynote_chan



Series: music threads her heart close [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Basically rewrote HardRock and why Marinette falls for Luka as hard and quick as she does, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Horror, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Light Angst, Lukanette, Mild Horror, Multi, No Beta We Die as Men, Spiritual, Tags Are Hard, and gods playing with childrens lives, because i'm soft for spiritual connections, very light angst, watch me as I try not to get angry over children having to be responsible for violence, welcome to rarepair hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-13 19:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickynote_chan/pseuds/stickynote_chan
Summary: There are miracles in her breath. She should know better, the otherness in her blood can sense the important-important-important shift even before this, but she doesn’t expect how blue eyes locking onto hers can still leave her hands clammy. Her cheeks flush and she feels completely, breathlessly human.--The one where being a fourteen-year-old superhero kind of changes you and Marinette is a bit morespirituallyconnected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RenderedReversed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenderedReversed/gifts).

> To RenderedReversed who unintentionally got me into this fandom and has now unintentionally gotten me into the fandom's rarepair.

The day Marinette meets Luka, she presses a hand to her chest. Splays her fingers atop her heart where it’s beating ten kilometres a second. Thumb digging in hard enough she can feel her ribs almost give into the pressure.

She doesn't, of course.

This is something no one but Tikki’s Chosens can understand. Not Chat Noir, not the other one-time superheroes, not even Master Fu. (It’s vice versa, of course; as much as they remain oblivious, she remains as equally oblivious to their tender connection with the world.) Tikki doesn’t understand, either. Doesn't know the intimate details of how it feels to turn from something as soft and fragile as a human into something still completely human and yet not. Tikki is a Kwami, a God, a Spirit. She has never felt torn flesh, or breath too tight she’s suffocating.

(Some days, the yet not almost frightens her.)

When Marinette’s transformed, she's connected Tikki. The mask and the armour suit aren’t just skin deep, it reaches down into her bones, engraves a mark she can feel more and more with every transformation. Deep, deep, deep. There’s Spirit in her veins, a coursing divinity in her blood. Her very breath springs good luck from her earrings. When she thinks of French monarchs and their God whispering behind their eyes, something aches in the pit of her stomach at the familiarity. (She tried, once, to spot the Ladybugs of the past by flipping through her female history books. She closed it halfway through. There were too many women who have died for their country.) It’s a connection forged between God and subject.

Some days when things are a bit too miraculous, when she gets a chance meeting with someone and it spirals into pathways and pathways, when there's nothing but the awareness that there’s a bemused Kwami curled into the palms of her hands, she looks into the mirror and can’t see the human in her eyes.

She's connected to the fabric of the world. Everyone is, really, but she can almost see it, sometimes, in the corners of her eyes. Every so often, it niggles a not-thought underneath her mind when she's thinking a bit too hard. Dangles temptation for her to catch between her teeth, a sweetness entirely for the otherworldly. But that way leads to cliffside jumps and jagged rocks ready to break free her human flesh. It'd be easy, so easy she knows, to take that offered fruit. But she's not ready, might never be ready, would never want to be ready, really, and turns away. Her earrings hums just the slightest bit louder each and every time.

(They’re always humming.)

So she knows that when she traces her eyes along his hands to his black nails and the guitar pick pressed between them, she knows that this is important. Her being sings it, the same way it does with Alya, with Chloé, with Nino, with Chat Noir. And never, ever with Adrien.

(_ Adrien, Adrien, Adrien, _ her mind whispers on loop every day since lightning struck, since a Kwami gave her secrets to the world. She wonders about that too; the coincidence.)

His eyes snap open and meets hers, blue-tipped to the shade of clear oceans. The tiniest shimmer of green when the light catches it just right. His lips already curled into a pretty smile.

There are miracles in her breath. She should know better, the otherness in her blood can sense the _ important-important-important _shift even before this, but she doesn’t expect how just blue eyes locking onto hers can still leave her hands clammy. Her cheeks flush and she feels completely, breathlessly human.

“Hey! My name’s Mama... uh, Ma-Ma-Marinette!”

He grins unfolds, reaches his eyes, and they’re brighter than the glitter of a clean river. It’s not quite lightning between them but a low hum permeates through her body, a soft note that rings straight to her blood. Her finger tingles with it.

And then she’s mumbling something, mouth working quicker than her brain can catch up. Too charged by the air around them to stop her words from running away from her. She’s used to it by now, fourteen years of practice, but it still leaves her mortified when he brings delicate musician hands to cover his lips and chuckles.

"Hello, Ma-Ma-Marinette."

His voice is the gentle roll of waves under the peak of moonlight, calm and musical. A melody as beautiful as perfectly stitched fabric. As charming as it is, it’s not enough. Humiliation storms her, quick and too familiar. Her blush burns, red hot and painful, and she looks down at her feet.

“Sorry,” he says, crystal eyes peeking out between blue-tipped bangs and shoulders hunching back. There’s a tilt to his lips and guilt stretches wide, an expression that comes too easy on his face. “I tend to make more sense with this.”

He pulls the electric guitar beside him with delicate care but she can see him fumbling minutely, fingers flexing along the neck with a touch too much hesitation. It’s the hesitation that softens her.

Her shoulders relax when he flicks the pick into his other hand and strums a chord. It’s easy, soft, something a little blue and she knows it's probably his first and favourite sound. The same way she knows Nino loves to track three songs after the other in a very specific way. The same way Alya loves to write on the Ladyblog the way she does. The way Marinette loves to stitch silk one way. Its style, resonance.

He must have seen it too, the moment when she lets that little chord enter and hit something in her heart. It’s probably the reason why he smiles and pats his bed as openly as he does.

She does sit and the smile reaches up higher, curves his cheek until a dimple appears along his chin, and he turns into an unbearably adorable sight.

As she makes herself as comfortable as she could (and it’s definitely a bit too easy, the way she can relax onto his bed and stare at him as quickly as she does), he plugs the guitar cord into the amp beside his bed. It hums to life with a flick. The sound a little too much like earrings.

He plays the chord again and, this time, she for sure knows it’s his favourite. He tunes the strings with deft fingers and gazes into her wide eyes with something searching in his. (She’s surprised to note no eyeliner despite the heavy punk theme from the earrings to the ripped jeans and way-too-cool patterned converse. She imagines doing it for him and, inexplicably, blushes hard.) He tilts his head, closes his eyes a millisecond too long to be a blink, and it looks like he’s trying to listen to something beyond the ever-present creak of the houseboat and flow of the riverbed.

“That’s strange,” he says, after finding whatever it is. “It seems like you have something like this in your heart.”

And then, he plays.

_ ‘Hello, _ ’ it starts off. _ ‘Sorry, I’m a little awkward. This is how I hear you_.’

It strokes her heart into a gentle torrent of sensations. Her eyes slips close of their own accord and she lets the music guide her through the streets of her own heart.

_ The smell of baking at dawn, _

_ the pull of needle and thread, _

_ The beaming, sunlit smile of her friends’ faces. _

It changes tunes and she knows where this is going, it’s too engraved into her bones for him to not hear it too.

(_ Wind rushing through her hair, _

_ a perfect balance of free-falling from the height of the Eiffel Tower and knowing she can pull up at any minute _

_ The too fast, too clear, too perfect clarity as she thinks, and fights, and _ wins _ . _)

“How do you do that?” she asks when he finishes, a little lightheaded, a lot more wonderstruck.

He aims his smile downwards, at something hidden for his memories only, and rests his arms along the length of his guitar, stopping the lingering note from singing a bar too long with his palm. His eyes flick up to meet hers before he answers, “Music is often simpler than words.”

It makes something burn in her heart and she quickly looks away for anything to distract her from his _ everything _.

A familiar face catches her attention and she stands up, eyes alight at the sight.

Jagged Stone poster and Jagged Stone shirt. She’s sensing a pattern and it’s something definitely she _ likes _.

The shine of plastic brings her eyes downwards. Guitar picks after guitar picks. Stacked neatly and carefully. She can't see any colour coordination or a style, her mind shuffles through ten different ideas (and three punk designs thrown in too; she’s itching for a pen already but she smooths her twitching hand along her pants) and wonders how they're ordered.

She peers underneath and smiles; a Jagged Stone guitar pick. She picks it up and there’s _ importance _ sown into it, a little fire that brushes against her surface touch.

“Do you like Jagged Stone?” she asks, distracted, too late to realise _ wow _ obviously.

Luka takes it in good nature, and she recognises the patience that comes to him as easily as it does Juleka. They’re really a family, and she likes to think ‘of river dragons’ (oh, now _ that’s _ a design). Captain Couffaine just happened to be a wild river compared to her goth, punky children.

“He’s my favourite singer!” he says, grin wide and free. A light of passion and dreams in his eyes.

“Mine too,” she says, ready to throw down some gushing, some awing but he comes to stand next to her and she- panics. Her mind blanks on her words and there’s blue electricity between their barely touching arms.

“You can have it if you like,” he says, nodding to the guitar pick. “I have plenty.”

She remembers Juleka offering nail polish the first day they met when she caught Marinette staring at her grey nails and the awesome brocade print and thinking _ nail art, nail art, Maman, I need nail art patterns and lots of brocade; brocade is expensive; I _ need _ it. _Marinette had come back home with pink nails and crystals.

She remembers Captain Couffaine offering the ring on her own finger as easy as breathing when she caught Marinette staring at the awesome black metal band and thinking _ accessories, accessories, oh lord, I _ need _ to design accessories and find a blacksmith; are there still blacksmiths; do blacksmiths do jewelry _. Marinette has the ring in her bag, tucked carefully into a pocket.

At the moment, she’s imagining chokers and bracelets like the one on Luka’s wrists and sort of dying on the inside.

Definitely runs in the family.

“Oh,” she says, a bit dazed and presses the pick between her fingers. She looks down at her new gift and beams back up at him as she tucks it into her palm, it feels like a torch’s flames barely touching before it blows away. “Thanks!”

“I think I’d better join the… groove, you said?” he says, chuckling, and it’s not mean-spirited, just a little sweet and served with a side of ice-cream that melts with her.

“Did I really say that?” She cringes, immediately, but it feels commiserating like Alya, sweet like Rose, empathetic like Jeluka, tough love like Alix. It’s still embarrassing but life isn’t over. “Oh, noo!”

She covers her face and feels it twinging pink.

“You’re a funny girl, Marinette,” he says and she dares to peak at him, at that _tone_, but he’s already moving away.

Before he leaves the room entirely, he tilts his head back and catches her gaze with a bright smile. Her cheeks are red for a different cause entirely.

Then he’s gone, upstairs;_ creak, creak, creak _.

She stares down at the pick just for a second and she feels _ soft _ . _ A low bass, drum bang, a mic testing _. She tucks it into her bag beside Captain Couffaine’s ring and runs up to catch the performance.


	2. Chapter 2

Half-lidded blue eyes (and it’s unfair how much brighter they are against the backdrop of a clear Parisian sky), a lazy smile that stretches when he sees that she’s staring right back at him.

He strums the guitar strings, right hand pressing down a chord she doesn’t even know the name of but knows immediately. _ Hello _ . Plucks at each string one a time, every note deliberate and slow. Eye contact never broken. _ Marinette _.

Her cheeks are going to be permanently red at some point.

Alya gives her a sly look, fox-like grin gracing her lips. It was barely an hour of Kwami but Marinette knows how quick connections can slip between Chosens and Gods. Can change a person, even the slightest, surface level bit.

“I think Marinette the Compass has found herself a new statue,” Alya says, nudging her teasingly.

“Luka?” she splutters, laughing it away even when her heartbeat betrays her. “No way. You’re being ridiculous.”

She scoffs and flicks the notion with a wave of her hand, only to swallow her breath when he closes his eyes and plays something a little blue and his favourite. She thought it had been enchanting, just the two of them in the bowels of his room with the quiet of their breathing and eyes staring into each other in a little fumbling dance of acquaintanceship.

She’s wrong.

Outside, here with rock of the Liberty, with the murmurs of her friends, with laughter of the wind, that chord hits her heart like the torrent of heavy rain.

“Sure,” she says, unable to look away from his fingers, from his thin musician hands, his black painted nails. “Sure...” she draws out, flowing like a content sigh, and rests her face into her cupped hands. She can’t look away from the pattern he makes. “He’s cool, and nice, and everything…”

Alya glances at her and hums. It’s enough for Marinette to jolt up and clear her head of blue patterns.

“But!” she says, firmly, but even that confidence fades just as quickly as she shrugs, heart sinking to the pit of her stomach in a familiar pathway. Like whisper of an Autumn breeze, she continues, “You know... Statue Number One.”

(_ Adrien, Adrien, Adrien, _ her mind whispers on loop every day since her heart was tender and she didn’t know what spirits took when they played in human lives.)

“Oh, girl,” Alya says.

* * *

The Jagged Stone pick does come into handy. But the _ important-important-important _ doesn’t fade even when the excuse leaves. It still leaves the imprint of heat in her hand before she slips it back into her bag.

He smiles and she knows she’s definitely going to have to learn a new way to pick a lock (again).

He offers her a hand and she takes it. She’s surprised to find it a little rough, especially at the fingertips. They brush against her palm like a rasp of rough jeans and his ring spins with the movement of her fingers as she twitches in his hand. Her hand is swimming in his, practically engulfed in the gentle hand lock. Were boy hands always so big?

“You’re amazing!” he says, head turned to stare at her with glittering eyes. “A real magician, Marinette.”

(Lock Picking. _ Again _.)

First, it was _ funny _ now, _ amazing _. Miracles, how can this boy compliment her so easily?

“You think so?” she says, eyes fluttering away as her heart bubbles. It simmers pleasantly through her body from her toes and all the up to tingling her cheeks as she sweeps her eyelashes downwards. She says, “Oh, it was nothing.” But she can’t help but swing back to look at him, and asks him with a giddiness that’s much too preppy, “Amazing, _ really _?”

Why did it look like he was coming closer to her face? Why was she raising her tippy toes to peer into his eyes?

She realises that he was leaning in only vaguely, her mind processes the fact like an afterthought. The charming grin quirking up the side of his lips and the dimple that appears is maybe a bit too distracting. But she can’t help matching him, movement for movement, distance charged.

She can’t look away.

“Excuse me,” Alya says, very politely. “But some of us are still chained up.”

Oh, Marinette is never going to hear the end of this.

She takes her hands (when did her other hand reach up to rest on his shoulder?!) off him and she spins around, hands behind her back and smile panic-wide as she looks at everyone’s knowing grins.

Oh, _ no _.

She cringes with a pink and bashful blush.

* * *

Her muscles rarely burn, she can run, jump, and fight, fight, fight without a catch in her breath. It only takes a month of being something not and she can weave through a crowd without bumping into anyone, she can catch up to Kim at his fastest, her feet are graceful in a way that feels wrong. Will probably always feel wrong.

She still drops things, her hands are still clumsy. It’s just now, underneath the anxiety and panic of _ oh no _, she feels a strange appreciative squeeze to her heart.

By now, she doesn’t even have to look up from her phone, from her sketchbook when she’s too driven to let go, to walk across crowd. Everyday, she takes a seat at her desk, dodging whatever mean trick Chloé was trying to pull with barely a glance. She doesn’t even have to think to move, and it’s better when she doesn’t think, isn’t completely and utterly taken by the feeling that she’s an alien in her own body. She can suppress it behind a smile, now. Hidden like a wisdom tooth.

As Ladybug, her superhuman capabilities are enhanced (_her inhumanity_, something in her whispers); she becomes a human part spirit, a body part Tikki, a patron of a god in flesh, or, maybe, a bridge between herself and the Kwami of Creation.

It’s a delicate little bridge hang over a valley so deep it’s darkness at the bottom, seesawing with her in the middle and barely clinging on as she tries to find out which side she’s supposed to walk towards. And it’s crumbling from one side, she can feel it in every awful graceful footstep she treds forward, can smell it like summer smoke and burnt dough. She still doesn't know which side is burning. Doesn't know what to do when she finds out which side she finally lands on. She doesn’t want to know.

Captain Hardrock is interesting in the same way all Akumas are. Where Ladybug struggles with being divinity and human, they’re so desperately human in an inhuman form, so clear cut on what is what that it brings about an almost clinical sort of admiration. Their forms aren’t human, their powers aren’t human, but when she peers into their eyes, she can only see human in them. The blaze of injustice, the chill of pain, the heartbreak of every burdensome emotion.

HardRock roars.

Ladybug smirks back like she’s not fourteen and terrified. She’s always terrified, as Ladybug. Never been able to shake the anxiety that tightens her stomach into knots. She’s just gotten better at hiding it behind curtains of confidence and an easy smile. Grins until it reaches her masked cheeks -- think of her parents, of her friends, of every person in Paris -- and lets her teeth clench together into a pearly smile -- bite into the fear and rest it underneath her tongue to ignore. It’s the same one that she shutters ‘alien in her own body’ behind.

As Ladybug, Paris rests on her shoulders.

Captain HardRock is not the hardest Akuma she has faced. The chains are extra contortions, the sword is an extra swing of her yoyo, the ship is an extra obstacle.

HardRock slices with a fast and nasty lunge, leaves an angry red arch in its wake. It misses. Not that it would have done anything even if it had hit. _ Maybe _.

There had never been open wounds as Ladybug. Some bruises, a couple of icky situations, definitely a few winded breaths but never so much as a sliced papercut. It’s a morbid thought, on what would happen to Ladybug if she got cut.

Maybe there’d be too much God in her blood, in her skin, for anything red to spill. She wonders if it’d be monarch blue, or if divinity even had blood and not something like liquid light, or if there would be anything at all. Was Ladybug human enough to spill human blood? She’s not curious enough to find out either way. Not that it was even written into fate. Not with Tikki so, so careful. So powerful.

One time, there had been a Knight Akuma in his heavy stone armor and he had tackled her with the full speed of a charging bus. She had only felt a little winded, like a particularly large dog had bowled her over instead of a colossal being of metal and concrete. It wasn’t her proudest moment.

She’d been asked afterwards by a wide-eyed Alya, how she could be so confident and ready for combat in her thin, little bodysuit when fighting against such armored opponents.

She had chewed through a selection half-words half-thoughts, swallowed around a boring answer, and rolled the bitter fear around her tongue once, twice, before she kept it hidden. Instead, she answered with an easy smirk.

“Magic suit,” she answered, winking and throwing her yoyo out without even looking. (It will catch, she knows. It will always catch, the same way the sun will always rise.) She whipped away before the lie could show up in her smile, ruining it for everyone.

But as Marinette, Ladybug rests on her shoulders.

So, the question sticks to her most days, a sticky feeling between her fingers she can’t rub away. Some times, some minutes, hours, days, _ everyday _, she can’t see anything but imprint of fear in the civilians’ eyes, the fear in her friends’ eyes, the fear in the Akuma victims’ eyes, the fear whispering in her head. The heavy armour to the thin super suit.

She creates a sketchbook filled with matching knee and arm guards, helmets, shoulder pads, whole outfits of protection and chucks it into the bottom of her drawer. Only brings it out after every fight. Can’t bear to see it regularly. There’s nothing but fear of another’s eyes -- of her _ own _ eyes -- drawn into them.

She thinks about what Captain HardRock will inspire her.

* * *

Luka clutches at Ladybug’s hand like a civilian, clinging onto one of hers between two of his own. There’s worry written into his grip and chipped black nails.

“Ladybug,” he says, hunching down to peer into her wide eyes and there’s concern written into his. “Is Marinette safe?”

Her mind lingers on the words and she’s touched. Her cheeks flush in appreciation and waterfalls and spring fountains fill up her head with a noise that sounds like summer and his song.

But she can keep things professional, she _ can _.

“I got her off the ship," she says with a smile that stretches to her cheeks and teeth revealed into a pearly grin.

His lips spread, eyes soften, but he's looking off to the side, imagining her, imagining Marinette. Eyes like the open expanse of a blue ocean.

“That girl," he says, like he's reciting poetry, whisper quiet, "is unbelievably brave.”

She turns away before Ladybug can reveal herself to that burning gaze. Her heartbeat can't stop thundering. _ Professional. _ She exhales a deep breath and tastes like the summer beaches.

"HardRock!" Chat Noir yells from above.

Duty calls.

“Lucky Charm!”


	3. Chapter 3

Defeating Captain HardRock is a matter of creativity, brute force, and perfect coordination with Chat Noir. It's all too damningly easy. They're in sync with one another in a way that feels effortless.

Sometimes it feels like the caress of a whispered _ soulmate _ between them. Not in the way he wants, not in the longing in his eyes for burning love and burning hearts. But in the way their minds connect, harmonise with each other so easily, so completely; two complementary colours outshining the world. Side by side, one step in front of the other as they face the skies of Paris together. _ Soulmate. _ It’s the easy bond even while hidden behind their masks. It’s in rapid-fire trust and the reassurance of a partner ready to fist bump you back.

And maybe it's the result of their Kwamis, of Yin and Yang, of balance in Creation and Destruction since existence. The demand for Push and Pull from the ocean tides to every single life all at once. Their bond may be stitched in destiny but it’s one of the few things she has never wanted to change, one of the few things she doesn’t fear when she thinks too hard about the world they live in. Ladybug and Chat Noir.

They’re soulmates. It's a fact, a knowing, an undeniable truth.

And she wouldn’t trade it for any other boy. Not Adrien, not Luka. It will always just be Chat Noir. Chat Noir and Ladybug. The dynamic duo. A dance for two halves of the same whole. But it won't be in the way he wants, because that would never happen. And she doesn’t _ want _ that to happen.

(_ Adrien, Adrien, Adrien, _ her mind whispers on loop every day since she saw the melting touch of Chat Noir’s eyes, of the caress of his being into the press of hers, and, maybe, one day it will stop feeling like a turbulent surface obscuring a dangerously deep pond.)

“Pound it,” they both say and grin at each other, unbidden and easy.

_ Beep _.

“Time to raise the sails, my lady,” he says, saluting like a sailor.

She smiles goodbye at him before he leaps away.

Breathing in, then…

“Miraculous Ladybug!”

There’s never quite the same feeling as a Miraculous restoring everything. It’s everything wonderful about being Ladybug. It’s everything awful, too. Like the casting aside of human flesh, of letting divinity pour its light into her spirit marked bones. Leaving mortality behind and every glorious, terrible implications with it.

Her body feels more like Tikki’s than hers, like Ladybug’s purpose was tied as a channeling medium for the Kwami to free her full potential and influence onto the world. The needle to Tikki’s thread. She feels a bit like a tool, she always does under the gaze of her friendly Kwami but just more so when Tikki’s _ Creation _ fixes up Paris. Like a blood sacrifice. She doesn’t complain, can’t complain. Her little God was fixing up Paris and the Akuma mess, how could she even think to complain?

So she buries the feeling into the spot underneath her ribs for her eyes and her sighs only. She can press her fingers along it when it's midnight alone and nothing but her thoughts to mourn over.

Paris at her fingertips, cleaning up everything in the palm, ladybugs in her veins.

“Enjoy your gig!” she says, eyes lingering on everyone’s faces, into the depths of their upturned lips. The relief a tangible pattern in the air. This was her purpose. This was why she needed to be more than human. “Bug out!”

* * *

She returns as Marinette, rushing along the Seine until she reaches the houseboat.

It really is a beautiful day, the feeling of a new wind brushes through her hair.

She can already see that the giant speaker was packed up and gone and she’s glad because another soundwave was going to deafen her.

“Marinette!” she hears before she sees him. He sounds winded, a million little worries wrapped into the curve of her name.

He must have been searching for her because she’s not even close enough yet to notice so quickly from a casual glance.

The rest of her friends cheer for her and she waves back with both arms.

Luka’s a flash of blue and black as he stumbles from The Liberty and onto the pavement.

She watches him with wide eyes as he runs to meet her halfway.

“Luka Couffaine,” she whispers to herself, lets his name slide through her mouth like a secret. It tastes like sugar and a little like a kiss of hello, a new dawn after rain clouds. A crystal clear raincoat over the shade of pink. She lets his name sit in her heart and then, louder, she calls back as he approaches her, “Luka!”

He takes her hands between his and she stares up at him, feeling the heady press of mortality in them. Her hands are still so small in his so she takes her other hand and curls it over his. Even. There’s relief evident in the spin of his ring and careful grip as they hold onto each other. The slight scratch of calloused fingers.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, smiling. The glow of the afternoon sun turns his face into the loveliness of a sequin dress, the crystal reflections of open water. He’s beautiful.

A song plays on loop in her head and the only words are his pretty smile.

“I’m glad you’re safe, too,” she says, she wants to scratch this feeling into the fabric of silk. Wants to make a ballgown of pink and blue crystals and float to the top of the world, a dance lit in moonlight.

“You’re incredibly brave,” he says and she’s already heard him say this about her but it’s a rush of fireworks at how easily he says it to her face. A light show in her chest that taps beats to her heart. “It was so smart of you to hide under the bed. I’d have never thought to do that.”

_ This boy _.

She laughs, giggles. “Oh, no. It wasn’t- it wasn’t all me. You were the one that had to sell it to Captain HardRock.”

He grins- smirks, really, and it’s a dangerous expression. It’s every bit as bad boy as his ripped jeans and piercings and black nails. “It wouldn’t be the first time I had to for Maman.”

She swallows her next breath with a little squeak.

“Oh, yeah?” she asks, high-pitched and breathy. She likes the spark that glimmers between them even though she sounds a little hopeless, a little too entranced.

“Mmm,” he hums, a note as smooth as satin, and it’s a sound she wants to hear him play it with the guitar strapped to his back. “I’ve snuck out once or twice.”

“Once or twice, _ really _?” she says, eyebrow raising and she doesn’t know where this confidence comes from, only knows that his voice is the spark to the fire brimming in her chest.

His eyes widen at her tone and he bites his lips, cheeks are a dusty pink, a delicate wash over his face. The bad boy image is instantly gone. Is she doing that to him? _ Miracles _.

“Maybe a few times more than twice,” he says, smiling with dimples, shy eyes flicking to the side before returning back to hers, a magnetic pull that doesn’t let them look away from each other too long. He sounds like memories when he says, “When I have a song stuck in my head and I need to play it to the city lights.”

She can feel relatable the pull to draw, sow, sow, sow until daybreak, of mind tracing nothing but the design in her head and discarded contemplations of sleeping, and she can’t help but think _ he’s cute. _

“Are you reciting something?” she asks, lips quirked up playfully, and he laughs, pulls a hand from hers to rub the back of his neck.

“Yes, sometimes,” he admits. “When I can’t play what’s in my heart, and the words in my head aren’t right, I say things I’ve written down.”

“You can play for me, you know, if it’s easier,” she says. She wants to hear the strum of his guitar, hear the song in his mind. Hear him the way he wants to be heard.

He smiles at that but instead of going to take his guitar out, his hand comes back from his neck to cup hers.

“Next time,” he says, looking down at their skin to skin connection and brushing his thumb along the back of her wrist. (His hands are so big.) "I don't want to let go just yet."

A gentle wind starts up and flutters the leaves into a swirl around them, it flutters her heart along with them.

Lieutenant Roger appears along the river, rocking a pedal boat, and calling a test for decibels.

The just yet comes to soon.

The two of them let go, slowly. A reluctant release and slide of fingers away from each other.

Her hands feel awkward beside her and he plays with his spinning ring.

They look away from each other as they walk back to the houseboat but the few centimeters between them heated with the blaze of a forest fire.

Alya wiggles ridiculous eyebrows at her when Marinette boards the ship and she can’t do anything but blush.

* * *

“Watch where you’re walking!” she shrieks. “There’s- There’s-”

Too late.

Adrien slips and crashes against the floor with a heavy _ thud _.

“-Papers on the floor,” she finishes lamely, wincing.

Nino rushes over immediately, “Adrien! You alive, buddy?”

Adrien laughs but he’s wincing and touching his head and Marinette is _ freaking out _. The image of an ambulance is blaring behind her eyes.

“Do you have a First Aid kit?” she asks Luka who grimaces and shakes his head.

“It’s pretty much empty,” he answers, drumming his fingers along his thigh before he starts spinning his ring.

But Adrien nods his head and smiles.

“No worries, I’m all good, I think I landed on my elbow,” he says to Nino and she sighs in relief.

And then Adrien’s part of the band? And now Luka’s welcoming him with a grin and transitioning his pull up hold into a handshake. They walk away, talking about music and piano sheets.

And, of course, Alya teases her, “How’s your compass?”

Marinette doesn’t know the answer to that as she looks between the two boys. Midnight and Sunshine. She's not sure if the wind in her hair is her imagination or not.

She doesn’t have to, thankfully, as they prepare for the performance. For now, she’ll tuck the thought away to overthink about later.

* * *

The performance is amazing!

Marinette knew that Juleka had played the bass since L’Ecole Primaire and that Ivan had started drumming in Collège but she had never known Rose would have such a powerhouse of a voice. Adrien doesn’t even spend more than a few seconds before he could accompany them with several block notes. It’s a little clumsy but he sounds nice with the group.

Her mind is looping and she stares at him when he starts the first song with a run of keys and, in a way, it feels familiar and habitual like the catch of a yo-yo.

But her eyes can’t help drifting off to the side.

_Adrien. _ Her mind whispers like a full stop.

Luka smiles at her throughout, cheeks darkening under the glow of neon blue lights when she smiles back. In the second song, it’s with the first strum of his guitar and, already, it sounds like _ him _. She knows he wrote this, she knows it in the way it sounds like raindrops and tastes like the sweetness of clean water. When the lyrics screams about Paris in the glow of night. She cheers when he lets rip into a guitar solo and her heart stutters when she can smell bakeries and feel of free falling.

The third song is Juleka, all horror and heavy bass and the whisper of Rose’s name.

Adrien leaves by the fourth song, panting and laughing. “My fingers aren’t cut out for this,” he apologies and the show goes on as he sits beside Nino.

By the sixth song, Marinette has figured out the songwriters and which someone took control of the music direction.

She can pinpoint when Rose had wanted to scream her passionate lyrics to the sound of grunge music, when Juleka wanted to explore horror and drama layered over the sweetness of her girlfriend, when Ivan wanted to slow down into a slow, almost romantic beat before he drums out a set of heavy heartbeats for Mylene. It’s impossibly romantic.

When Luka had stayed up to the hush of a sleepy city and wrote songs and lyrics he recites like poetry. When he writes _ Marinette _ into the climax of the song. She can't help feeling breathless.

Marinette isn’t the only one who’s screaming along to the lyrics by this point. She’s completely lost herself to the hard rock of the music, can’t stop herself from smiling as she bangs her head to the band’s everything, to the feel of a young night, to Luka’s guitar. She feels impossibly human right here, right now, and the music lets herself be the fourteen-year-old girl she is, enjoying the world without the crush of divinity and fate. Everyone’s stood up since the end of the chorus, jumping and stomping their feet to flow the song.

“We love unicorns!” they all scream when the last song closes with the stomp of the drums, with the dexterous, haunting bassline, with Rose’s loudest passionate scream yet, with the shred of the guitar. It echoes through the night sky, an exhilarating finisher for the an exhilarating night.

“We are Kitty Section!” the band sings with one final note. “Thank you!”

Everyone laughs, claps and yells.

And then it ends.

* * *

Luka leans down to her and she leans back up to him, distance for distance, matching smiles, the air between them charged with thunder and the hum of guitar and earrings.

“Hey, Marinette,” he says.

“Luka,” she says, like a secret sundae shared between just the two of them. She hums her song and his breath catches in his throat.

He says, “I really do think you’re are unbelievably brave, by the way. You’re amazing.”

And she replies, “I think you are, too.”

* * *

(_ Adrien, Adrien, Adrien, _ her mind stops whispering on loop.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here you are <3 Thanks for everyone who supported this!! I wasn't actually expecting to finish it in like a couple of days but Lukanette really motivates me hahah
> 
> I'll be writing more for this, I've already got a couple of scenes but I don't want to post them here cause that pretty much diverge from canon and this one is just supposed to be canon but rewritten.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this work on my google docs is literally "ml: the one where I try really hard to not make zutara while writing lukanette" and I failed. Also, this whole fic is fuelled by metal.
> 
> Come to my new [ML Tumblr](https://stickynotechan.tumblr.com/) for a chat :)


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